COMPUTING: Virtualisation

[Kyuuketsuki]

Try /var/opt/xen/iso_import/

That was it thanks (at least it existed) ... it managed to load 1 iso but unfortunately the size limit appears to exist because when I tried to copy the server 2008 ISO across it failed with the server error "File system on Control Domain Full" which is crazy because it's an 80Gb drive. Also, doing that rescan (and even restarting the server) didn't make the one ISO that did copy over appear on the drop down list.

The following is what my primary disk looks like (had to use the --force flag to get in as the OS is still running ... my assumption is that so far I have tried to copy iso's to /dev/sda2 (the command domain?):

[root@ar-xen-host ~]# sfdisk /dev/sda --force
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
BLKRRPART: Device or resource busy

This disk is currently in use - repartitioning is probably a bad idea.
Umount all file systems, and swapoff all swap partitions on this disk.
Use the --no-reread flag to suppress this check.

Disk /dev/sda: 9729 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 0+ 498 499- 4008186 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 499 997 499 4008217+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 998 9728 8731 70131757+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
Input in the following format; absent fields get a default value.
<start> <size> <type [E,S,L,X,hex]> <bootable [-,*]> <c,h,s> <c,h,s>
Usually you only need to specify <start> and <size> (and perhaps <type>).

You see this broadly speaking makes no sense to me ... I installed Xen on an 80Gb drive, it can't be using more than say 1Gb in actual files (2Gb to be kind) and the above hints at that! /dev/sda3 appears to be around 70GB and I've no idea what Xen is using that for but there should be plenty of room there for an ISO store.

Sure I know I could put the ISO's on some kind of network share (although, in truth, I don't actually know how to do that yet) but why should I have to (that's why I chose to use amn 80Gb drive and Xen's direct competitor, ESXi, has no such issues in this respect)? What I want to do is:

• Create a folder on /dev/sda3
  
• Repoint the ISO repository pointer/flag/symbolic link at that folder
  
• Copy ISO's to it
  
• Rescan if necessary
  
• Have those ISO's become available to me for my virtual machines.

Is that so much to ask?

Maybe some of this makes sense to you or maybe you can give instructions to help me get the info so you can help me? Any ideas?

Sigh! All this just so I can have template machines!

Kyu

[leo-rcc]

To be honest I ever tried it like that. I just mapped the dvd drive since I only had 2 VM's to build and not a lot of time to test. There are various links about mounting an NFS volume as SR.

[Retorth]

I have to say, the whole concept/idea of "Virtualization" is very intriguing. I'm actually pursuing a diploma in Information Technology, after which I plan to either do a BSc in the same discipline or a BSc in Computer Science.

I particularly liked the "sandpit"...purposefully entering dodgy sites to test a computer's resilience..etc. I am planning to major in IT security so this thread really interests me.

[Tiberius]

Do a BSc in Computer Science with Information Security like me It's fun!

[Retorth]

The best of both worlds yeah! I can't wait to start! Programming and all...wooo! Haha...geeky I know but hey, I'm lovin it!

[Kyuuketsuki]

Well ... it's looking lime I am going to have to return to ESXi simply because I can't configure the system the way I want ... anyone known of any other bare-metal hypervisors I can try before I do? By bare-metal I mean ones that are a complete OS in themselves and do not require an alternate OS installed before use.

EDIT: Oooh! Shiny! Microsoft has a freely downloadable bare-metal hypervisor!

Kyu

[leo-rcc]

Yeah, also know as Xen.

Citrix and MS use the same hypervisor, they work together in this.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Yeah, also know as Xen.

Citrix and MS use the same hypervisor, they work together in this.

Oh!

So I'll get the same problems? Bummer!

Kyu

[Kyuuketsuki]

OK,

So I was looking at RHEV (RedHat Enterprise Virtualisation) and it is obviously commercially oriented (no free download, just trial) so I just watched the video and picked up on a couple of things, notably something called KVM. RedHat split into RH & Fedora some time ago with Fedora being the true opensource part but being used almost as a testing ground for the RH's commercial stuff so I looked at the latest Fedora and sure enough there's KVM and QEMU which have been combined to form a simpler (more straightforward) virtualisation package.

Anyone know anything about this? Is it just a RedHat thing or common on many Linux Distro's ... I prefer bare-metal virtualisation but obviously bare-metal is just another way of saying we've combined the virtualisation and host OS to make something not quite as flexible as an OS and virtual server application (sort of). If I was to choose the distro I wanted it would be SuSE (I'm a bit of a sucker for it) so I was wondering if RH are doing something special (do lots of distro's have this stuff in them?) or just claiming they are?

Also, if I went with this kind of virtualisation would I have a decent VM management system (like Xen & ViClient?

EDIT: Oh yeah, I've installed MS Hyper-V but so far am not impressed simply because it doesn't appear to support much in the way of Linux (only SuSE) which kinda invalidates one of the uses I planned for virtualisation (learning about MS stuff but also Linux stuff, not only SuSE). So far it looks like ESXi is still the best.

Kyu

[Tiberius]

Suse & Fedora both use the RPM package manager. If you can get the KVM/QEMU package from fedora, you should be able to install it on a Suse build.